Stardock Start8 is the best $5 anyone can spend if you're going to run Windows8 on a normal computer (not a tablet). It puts the normal Start menu back and you can pretend that garish Metro UI doesn't exist, for normal usage. I just installed the final product yesterday and I have my full hierarchical, cascading menu just like I had with the Win7 system I upgraded. I'll tolerate the rest of Win8 quirks as long as I don't have to look at that awful UI.

OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable, if you aren't profitable enough to satisfy some analyst somewhere, you get hammered. And that kind of thing can lead to employees losing their jobs.

It's not a conspiracy against one company either. Google is getting hammered for not meeting analyst's expectations, as is Apple. In fact, a few weeks back, I read one of the most pants-on-head retarded articles I've ever seen about how Apple should fire Tim Cook because their revenue is up only about 75% from last year.

syrynxx:Stardock Start8 is the best $5 anyone can spend if you're going to run Windows8 on a normal computer (not a tablet). It puts the normal Start menu back and you can pretend that garish Metro UI doesn't exist, for normal usage. I just installed the final product yesterday and I have my full hierarchical, cascading menu just like I had with the Win7 system I upgraded. I'll tolerate the rest of Win8 quirks as long as I don't have to look at that awful UI.

I've been running win8 for a solid 6 months. I hated the new start menu for exactly 15 minutes, until I figured out how to customize it and make it mine. I find that it's far more efficient than the previous start menu, and it's a hell of a lot better than the mac dock.

That's not to say there aren't annoyances - like apps popping up in Metro when you want them in the desktop. But win8 doesn't suck, unless you think Win7 sucks.

Dinki:OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

jake_lex:This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable

Microsoft's problem with the market is not revenue, it's industry trends. The primary driver of Microsoft's dominance (windows on the desktop/lappie) is no longer a dominant computing platform, and is trending down from where it is now.

And it's not just that. 10 years ago if I wanted to start a company that revolved around some sort of software or computing service, I'd go to the back, get a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars, and go purchase a computing infrastructure that would get me through the first couple of years. There'd be a good chance I'd build it on windows, maybe SQL server, etc. If I were to do that today, I'd take my credit card, and for $25/month get started with Amazon Web services, and grow the infrastructure with my revenue. Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier (keep in mind I'm saying this as a guy who specializes in MS kit for an IT infrastructure supplier).

Finally, when IT companies crater, they crater hard. HP was $40 a year or so ago. It's $14 now. They've got a market cap of $29B against $127B in revenue and what, $9B in profit? On the face of it, that company doesn't deserve it - it's big, it's profitable. But anyone in IT can tell you that HP is probably accurately valued by the market, because most of its profits are from a dying printer business, most of its revenue are from a dying PC-related business, and they have lots of product, but no rudder in enterprise or cloud technologies.

It's not unreasonable for people to take their profits from holding MS stock right now. The company is currently on the cusp of a make-or-break few years, If Win8 doesn't staunch the bleeding on the tablet side of things, and they can't get their sh*t together with enterprise cloud, they'll be in the same position as HP. I won't pretend to know whether they will fail or not, but it's silly not to see the risk in Microsoft's position right now, and drops in profit are the canary in the coal mine the tech industry (any industry, really, but tech in particular). Dropping your margins so you can move product is not good.

Babwa Wawa:Dinki: OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

jake_lex: This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable

Microsoft's problem with the market is not revenue, it's industry trends. The primary driver of Microsoft's dominance (windows on the desktop/lappie) is no longer a dominant computing platform, and is trending down from where it is now.

And it's not just that. 10 years ago if I wanted to start a company that revolved around some sort of software or computing service, I'd go to the back, get a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars, and go purchase a computing infrastructure that would get me through the first couple of years. There'd be a good chance I'd build it on windows, maybe SQL server, etc. If I were to do that today, I'd take my credit card, and for $25/month get started with Amazon Web services, and grow the infrastructure with my revenue. Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier (keep in mind I'm saying this as a guy who specializes in MS kit for an IT infrastructure supplier).

Finally, when IT companies crater, they crater hard. HP was $40 a year or so ago. It's $14 now. They've got a market cap of $29B against $127B in revenue and what, $9B in profit? On the face of it, that company doesn't deserve it - it's big, it's profitable. But anyone in IT can tell you that HP is probably accurately valued by the market, because most of its profits are from a dying printer business, most of its revenue are from a dying PC-related business, and they have lots of product, but no rudder in enterprise or cloud technologies.

It's not unreasonable for people to take their profits from holding MS stock right now. The company is currently on the cusp of a make-or-break few years, If Win8 doesn't staunch the bleeding on the tablet side ...

Those are all interesting points.

So what if I told you hosted Sharepoint makes them over 1 Billion a year in revenue?

Or that hosted Exchange probably does as well?

Microsoft is deeply embedded in office culture where they need people to do the job, I realize its not every techie fanboy's favorite but I know of many companies that could not function without it.

There are policies against using Google Docs, due to the privacy leak aspects. Those companies comfortable with clouding up their documents are using Salesforce or Sharepoint anyway.

All the "omg Microsoft is so old and boring" people are missing the point, hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on using it every day, and that is a massive load of infrastructure.

You just don't wave your Android and Google fanboy wands at it and make it vanish overnight.

Microsoft is a stable mature tech company and it isn't going anywhere for a while.

And if it comes up with another XBOX, there's another chance to stay relevant for another 5-10 years.

It's not a conspiracy against one company either. Google is getting hammered for not meeting analyst's expectations, as is Apple. In fact, a few weeks back, I read one of the most pants-on-head retarded articles I've ever seen about how Apple should fire Tim Cook because their revenue is up only about 75% from last year.

While that's true I also look at the other side of their(Google) earnings report. Net income is down 20% with revenues up 45%. That's not a good trend.

I don't think saying Windows 8 sucks is entirely accurate. I think Windows 8 is NOT what people want on their desktop OS (though it is fine for tablets). Businesses will not change to Windows 8 (especially since so many of them are migrating from XP to Windows 7), so people won't want it on their home systems either.

Generation_D:And if it comes up with another XBOX, there's another chance to stay relevant for another 5-10 years.

Actually, that is going to be a nasty business.

Xbox720 and PS4 are going to face off soon.

Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

jake_lex:This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable, if you aren't profitable enough to satisfy some analyst somewhere, you get hammered. And that kind of thing can lead to employees losing their jobs.

So, basically, you don't know how investing works.

People don't invest just because a company is profitable, they invest based on their belief that the company will reach a certain level of profitability in the future. The level of profitability required to meet any given investor's goal over a specific period of time is probably different from another investor. Investor A may expect a profit of X while investor B expects a profit of X-Y. The actual profit may come in somewhere below what A expects but above what B expects. In that case, A may decide - and this is key - that there are other companies where he can put his money to meet his intended goals more quickly or more safely while B will actually be pleasantly surprised.

Just making any old profit isn't good enough for every investor because other companies may make profits that are better able to meet a given investor's specific goals. It's not a bad thing and it doesn't necessarily mean cataclysm for the company. If the stock drops 10 points today because of this news causing all the As to sell, it may rise 10 more points tomorrow because MSFT become more attractive to the Bs who previously thought the price was too high.

Long story short, you're looking at these numbers with the same sort of tunnel vision you're effectively accusing analysts of using, you're just standing on the other end of the tunnel from them. These numbers, alone, are only meaningful to people who already have a plan for their MSFT holdings. Other people will use them as part of a larger pool of information in forming a plan which could very well lead to them buying in to the stock, raising the price higher and giving Microsoft capital to hire more people. That's just how the market works.

My kids' elementary school replaced their laptop cart with an iPad cart this year. They still have windows lappies, but they're for content creation (for now). Almost all digital content consumption is done via tablet. And how much time do you think the average person spends interacting with his smartphone vs his desktop?

These are two sectors (phones and tabs) where MS currently has almost no share. Do you think that's a good situation for a consumer IT company to be?

As I said, I dunno if MS is going to pull a rabbit out of its hat here. I kind of suspect that they will, because nobody in either sector has done an acceptable job making their product into something that can be used to both comfortably create and consume content. MS has a huge advantage with Office, and I think that will do them fine.

I'm not saying it's old and boring. I'm saying that Microsoft is very nearly irrelevant in the phone market, completely irrelevant in the tab market, and has surprisingly little influence in cloud.

The danger for MS is that they built their enterprise solutions based on their ownership of the client. Without Office, SharePoint's just another collaboration platform. They are starting to not own the client, and that's dangerous.

Clearly MS is not folding up shop anytime soon, and nobody is saying that they are - it's the fifth most valuable company in the world, for chrissakes. But anyone who says MSFT is going to be able to ride their enterprise and desktop market into the next decade is off their rocker.

Microsoft has some pivoting to do, and the next few years are going to be really important.

madgonad:Generation_D: And if it comes up with another XBOX, there's another chance to stay relevant for another 5-10 years.

Actually, that is going to be a nasty business.

Xbox720 and PS4 are going to face off soon.

Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

I just don't see 4k support being a big deal. 1080p displays are pretty much entrenched in the market, so 4k adoption is going to take at least a decade to really get going, especially since it will mean another cycle of upgrading equipment and media. For most people, 1080p Blu-Ray is going to look plenty sharp all the way up to 70 or 80 inches, and most people don't have a home theater room to put in a larger HDTV or projector, so they are going to stick with 1080p Blu-Rays for the next 10 to 15 years. It'll also take another couple of decades for a 4k broadcast standard to be implemented for OTA and cable. It's just way too expensive for everyone to replace the current HD infrastructure overnight with 4k, just to get a picture that is marginally sharper at normal viewing distances compared to 1080p, so I'm expecting the 4k transistion to not really be a thing until at least 2025 or so. It's basically going to be as much of a gamechanger for the PS4 as SACD suppport was for the PS3.

Generation_D:There are policies against using Google Docs, due to the privacy leak aspects. Those companies comfortable with clouding up their documents are using Salesforce or Sharepoint anyway.

And this goes to another aspect of MS' strategy with which I disagree. There are always going to be companies who will NEVER put critical or sensitive data (messaging, collaboration, and so forth) in a public cloud. Microsoft has a huge differentiator from Google here - you can deploy on private gear as well as in the cloud. You can mix and match. It's great.

But the Exchange team has virtually ignored on-premises exchange from the last four years in an attempt to compete with Google. It's now a complete beast - extremely difficult to install and maintain. And now they're telling customers that the version after 2013 will be the last on-premises version of Exchange. WTF? I can't manage my own email if I want to use Exchange? That's absolutely insane, and if they go ahead with it, then VMware is going to slaughter them with Zimbra.

They would do far better to emphasize a public/private cloud mix. Have all their apps downloadable and deployable as fully patched Hyper-V VMs that can be moved in and out of Azure at will. But they're so focused on "What Would Google Do?" that they can't even recognize, much less exploit, a competitive advantage. That also makes me worried for them.

madgonad:Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

Not that i'm much of a gamer but:

if I'm dropping a few hundred bucks on a console, I don't expect it to be futureproof and last me 10 years. So what if the PS4 does 4k. I won't have a TV that does that for at least another 5 years. Chances are the thing will be dead by then, or its price will have come down, or a better model is out.

jake_lex:Dinki: The world's largest software company saw its profit drop from $5.74 billion (£3.57 billion) to $4.47 billion (£2.79 billion) this quarter.

OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable, if you aren't profitable enough to satisfy some analyst somewhere, you get hammered. And that kind of thing can lead to employees losing their jobs.

It's not a conspiracy against one company either. Google is getting hammered for not meeting analyst's expectations, as is Apple. In fact, a few weeks back, I read one of the most pants-on-head retarded articles I've ever seen about how Apple should fire Tim Cook because their revenue is up only about 75% from last year.

You don't understand how the stock market works. Also, I'd hardly call a drop of 3% a "hammering".

My kids' elementary school replaced their laptop cart with an iPad cart this year. They still have windows lappies, but they're for content creation (for now). Almost all digital content consumption is done via tablet. And how much time do you think the average person spends interacting with his smartphone vs his desktop?

These are two sectors (phones and tabs) where MS currently has almost no share. Do you think that's a good situation for a consumer IT company to be?

As I said, I dunno if MS is going to pull a rabbit out of its hat here. I kind of suspect that they will, because nobody in either sector has done an acceptable job making their product into something that can be used to both comfortably create and consume content. MS has a huge advantage with Office, and I think that will do them fine.

My point is desktops and laptops are still the overall dominant platforms, by lightyears.

Babwa Wawa:Dinki: OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

jake_lex: This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable

Microsoft's problem with the market is not revenue, it's industry trends. The primary driver of Microsoft's dominance (windows on the desktop/lappie) is no longer a dominant computing platform, and is trending down from where it is now.

And it's not just that. 10 years ago if I wanted to start a company that revolved around some sort of software or computing service, I'd go to the back, get a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars, and go purchase a computing infrastructure that would get me through the first couple of years. There'd be a good chance I'd build it on windows, maybe SQL server, etc. If I were to do that today, I'd take my credit card, and for $25/month get started with Amazon Web services, and grow the infrastructure with my revenue. Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier (keep in mind I'm saying this as a guy who specializes in MS kit for an IT infrastructure supplier).

Finally, when IT companies crater, they crater hard. HP was $40 a year or so ago. It's $14 now. They've got a market cap of $29B against $127B in revenue and what, $9B in profit? On the face of it, that company doesn't deserve it - it's big, it's profitable. But anyone in IT can tell you that HP is probably accurately valued by the market, because most of its profits are from a dying printer business, most of its revenue are from a dying PC-related business, and they have lots of product, but no rudder in enterprise or cloud technologies.

It's not unreasonable for people to take their profits from holding MS stock right now. The company is currently on the cusp of a make-or-break few years, If Win8 doesn't staunch the bleeding on the tablet side ...

Worse then that as an application developer who started in this business in 1995 I would never have thought of developing any software on anything that was not a windows platform. Since about 2008 Windows is a third or fourth operating system I port to, applications I develop today are either a mobile app or web application I've not developed a desktop application for windows in years and there is no putting that genie back in the bottle.

Babwa Wawa:Dinki: OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

jake_lex: This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable

Microsoft's problem with the market is not revenue, it's industry trends. The primary driver of Microsoft's dominance (windows on the desktop/lappie) is no longer a dominant computing platform, and is trending down from where it is now.

And it's not just that. 10 years ago if I wanted to start a company that revolved around some sort of software or computing service, I'd go to the back, get a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars, and go purchase a computing infrastructure that would get me through the first couple of years. There'd be a good chance I'd build it on windows, maybe SQL server, etc. If I were to do that today, I'd take my credit card, and for $25/month get started with Amazon Web services, and grow the infrastructure with my revenue. Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier (keep in mind I'm saying this as a guy who specializes in MS kit for an IT infrastructure supplier).

There's no way you're spending $25/mth to get started. I did price it out a while ago for three web servers, two SQL server in failover mode, and some file storage. It cost more than the equipment I purchased, along with a drastic decrease in CPU power, RAM and storage.

No one uses mySQL for real unless they're stupid or want to kill themselves. There's nothing wrong with Linux but PHP sucks giant balls and it's only really popular in the SME space (and really, only the S space).

Shazam999:Babwa Wawa: Dinki: OH THE HUMANITY!! How will microsoft survive on a profit of only $4.47 Billion in 3 months?

jake_lex: This is what pisses me off about corporate culture as a whole: it's not enough to be profitable

Microsoft's problem with the market is not revenue, it's industry trends. The primary driver of Microsoft's dominance (windows on the desktop/lappie) is no longer a dominant computing platform, and is trending down from where it is now.

And it's not just that. 10 years ago if I wanted to start a company that revolved around some sort of software or computing service, I'd go to the back, get a loan for a few hundred thousand dollars, and go purchase a computing infrastructure that would get me through the first couple of years. There'd be a good chance I'd build it on windows, maybe SQL server, etc. If I were to do that today, I'd take my credit card, and for $25/month get started with Amazon Web services, and grow the infrastructure with my revenue. Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier (keep in mind I'm saying this as a guy who specializes in MS kit for an IT infrastructure supplier).

There's no way you're spending $25/mth to get started. I did price it out a while ago for three web servers, two SQL server in failover mode, and some file storage. It cost more than the equipment I purchased, along with a drastic decrease in CPU power, RAM and storage.

No one uses mySQL for real unless they're stupid or want to kill themselves. There's nothing wrong with Linux but PHP sucks giant balls and it's only really popular in the SME space (and really, only the S space).

Wow. All those dot coms still on MySQL should be listening to you then. Cause they insist they are able to do the job without paying for Oracle licenses.

Agree on PHP. Insecure out of the box, can't be tuned properly, ridiculous as a scalable layer. Nice for toys and small companies. Yet its everywhere and getting rid of it won't happen any time soon either.

Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

Honest question: source?

I didn't know any details had been released. And I just have to disbelieve that the new xbox will have sub-par processing.

Also, 4K? No one even knows what it is yet, and when they do, ain't no one gonna be buying it. First off, it'll take about 7 years for the price to come down. Second off, Unless you're sitting closer than 6 feet or so, it's indistinguishable.The next hot ticket item for TV's will be OLED. They're set to launch very soon. It'll take about 3 years for the price to be affordable.

Generation_D:Wow. All those dot coms still on MySQL should be listening to you then. Cause they insist they are able to do the job without paying for Oracle licenses.

Too many people have had too many problems with mySQL. Having said that there are paid versions of mySQL now since, ahem, Oracle bought them that might be better. But at that point why even bother with mySQL?

From your link - ". . .at 10 feet, your eye can't resolve the difference between otherwise identical 1080p and 720p televisions. Extrapolating this out, you'd have to get a TV at least 77 inches diagonal before you'd start having a pixel visibility problem with 1080p."

I have an older 42" plasma, and I can assure that at 10 feet away, the image quality difference is noticeable between even 1080i and 720p. This guy is full of crap. Also considering that you can buy 65" TV's these days for under $2,000 - I wouldn't put a 75" TV out of the realm for affordable displays in the coming years.

madgonad:Generation_D: And if it comes up with another XBOX, there's another chance to stay relevant for another 5-10 years.

Actually, that is going to be a nasty business.

Xbox720 and PS4 are going to face off soon.

Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

I think Sony screwing up kind of has to be a given at this point. They went from having the number one console of all time last generation to a console that is now sitting last (barely) this generation. Not to mention how badly Sony has seemingly botched the vita. Sony is barely selling 10k units a week in what is suppose to be their best market (JP) and dropping. Last week they barely managed to move 6k units in Japan (PSP sold 15k units that week).

The US is seeing similarly abysmal sales, during September (5 weeks) the Vita sold between 50k and 62k units (that's less units than the very soon to be dead Wii). Sony has already revised sales of psp+vita for the fiscal year from 16 million to 12 million and at this rate even 12 million is a pipe dream.

LineNoise:madgonad: Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

Not that i'm much of a gamer but:

if I'm dropping a few hundred bucks on a console, I don't expect it to be futureproof and last me 10 years. So what if the PS4 does 4k. I won't have a TV that does that for at least another 5 years. Chances are the thing will be dead by then, or its price will have come down, or a better model is out.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the console of today is the design target of a decade from now. Fallout: New Vegas and Skyrim were designed for a half GB of RAM (or 2*256MB for the PS3), in a mid-range computer from 2005.

So if Microsoft puts out a meh 2010-ish computer as a console, then in 2021, we'll be stuck on 2010 graphics.

I disagree. Win7 was and still is awesome as a computer OS. It's just as awkward as a tablet OS (I have a tablet I've been running Win7 on for years) as the Metro UI is on a non-touchscreen system. This computer is a touchscreen system (HP Touchsmart all-in-one 25") and Win8 'gestures' don't work on it natively - swipes used to work in Vista and 7, but no longer in 8. So the myopic mindset of Win8 is only envisioned on brand new systems, most of which are touchscreens or tablets compatible with Win8.

I've upgraded from NT4 to 2000, 2000 to XP, 2000 to 2003, 2003 to 2008, XP to Vista, XP to Win7 - in all of those cases, it was clear how to access my previously-installed applications. Downgrading from Win7 to Win8 - if I didn't have an app linked to the taskbar (only my top 10 or so apps go there) or as a shortcut on the desktop (I hate the desktop because I usually run full-screen apps like RDP sessions and never see the desktop), there was no apparent way to lauch the remaining 30-40 installed applications on my system other than the horrible "All Apps" flat nightmare of a hundred identical-sized icons.

When WinXP came out with a new dynamic Start menu, users had a choice to use it or the "Classic" menu style from W2K. It would have been trivial for Microsoft to give users the same option in Win8 that a third-party company provides for $5. If people want to live in the nee-Metro UI world, they can do that. I prefer the Start Menu, since I'm currently using this system through an RDP session and none of the touchscreen stuff is even an option.

Shazam999:Generation_D: Wow. All those dot coms still on MySQL should be listening to you then. Cause they insist they are able to do the job without paying for Oracle licenses.

Too many people have had too many problems with mySQL. Having said that there are paid versions of mySQL now since, ahem, Oracle bought them that might be better. But at that point why even bother with mySQL?

Because supported mysql is a quarter of the cost of the alternatives?

There's a shiat-ton of crapplications out there that need nothing more complicated than a multi-user version of Access. Paying $7k-12k/core for that doesn't make sense.

LouDobbsAwaaaay:syrynxx: Stardock Start8 is the best $5 anyone can spend if you're going to run Windows8 on a normal computer (not a tablet).

I don't really like the idea of "make an OS upgrade so terrible people will pay even more money to fix it". I think I'll just stick with 7 until I can leap-frog over 8, or off of Windows entirely.

I'm not thrilled either. Unfortunately I make my living off Microsoft skills so I have to become proficient at this new OS whose native UI I dislike. I work with enterprise-class organizations and there is virtually nothing in Win8's UI applicable to desktop business users. There are a few cool things in the OS like Windows To Go where you can run a thumbdrive-bootable version of Windows, or HyperVisor where you can switch to a Win7 image or even run Win7 and Win8 in parallel, but most of the changes are aimed at an OS running on a tablet.

The 'off Windows entirely' is exactly Microsoft's problem. Android and iOS devices are eating Microsoft's lunch, so they had to do something to make a play in the portable-device space. Their big gamble is that if they launched something like the Surface with not-Metro on it, it would probably have a Zune-like level of acceptance simply because the iPad and Android are so dominant already. A small percentage of zealots or curious people would buy one, but it wouldn't get the critical mass with developers to be able to compete with Android or iOS tablets/phones. So they're foisting the not-Metro UI on desktop Windows users in an attempt to get developers to write applications for a large client base (desktop Win8 systems) so that apps will exist for the not-Metro tablet platform. But since the not-Metro UI is so different from past versions, ordinary users may feel that it's a different OS anyway, so why not hop over to Linux or OS-X.

I think people are underestimating the speed at which 4k is coming. The TV makers are desperate, 3D is a flop, they NEED people to upgrade and they'll make it attractive to do so. Five years is too far out for them to coast on 1080p and 3D, they'll push 4k hard next Christmas, or the one after that at the latest.

madgonad:Generation_D: And if it comes up with another XBOX, there's another chance to stay relevant for another 5-10 years.

Actually, that is going to be a nasty business.

Xbox720 and PS4 are going to face off soon.

Sony will support 4K in both games and movies while Microsoft will stay at 1080p and add BD support (ooooh). If the next console standard is to last another decade - would you buy the one that DOESN'T support the new tech that will be dropping in price to fit the upper middle class at LAUNCH?

The 720 will also have a pathetically puny GPU. At least the 360 was bleeding edge at launch. The 720 will be packing a GPU that can be bought right now for $50. The 720 is a cash-grab, plain and simple. Unless Sony screws-up, they should dominate the next generation.

it'll be nasty in that none of the next consoles will sell as many units as the ps3/360/wii and 3rd parties will continue to consolidate

Babwa Wawa:Shazam999: Generation_D: Wow. All those dot coms still on MySQL should be listening to you then. Cause they insist they are able to do the job without paying for Oracle licenses.

Too many people have had too many problems with mySQL. Having said that there are paid versions of mySQL now since, ahem, Oracle bought them that might be better. But at that point why even bother with mySQL?

Because supported mysql is a quarter of the cost of the alternatives?

There's a shiat-ton of crapplications out there that need nothing more complicated than a multi-user version of Access. Paying $7k-12k/core for that doesn't make sense.

Hmm, well, you're the one saying that dot-coms, which presumably have more than a couple of users (but maybe only a couple of paid) are fine using mySQL, and I'm saying no, lots of them have been moving away from it to other platforms once they can afford it.

Also, not sure where you've been, but SQL Server ain't that expensive. Hell there's even a free one that would work well for most places. At least it doesn't have Oracle licensing hell.

Babwa Wawa:Big win for me, but Amazon is my platform, and I'm probably running Linux and MySQL. Windows (and Microsoft) is increasingly irrelevant to me as an IT supplier

My company bought into this philosophy four years ago, and every admin got certified on Red Hat. True to form, no one bothered to check and see what our enterprise software suites actually required, so in the past four years we've deployed about 50 linux servers, all single purpose, and around 750 Windows servers. Our Oracle systems are run by five rabid Unix sysadmins who live under the sub-basement of our headquarters. Occasionally we'll open the door to their room and throw in 40 pounds of coffee and an old Hustler.

I like windows 8, only use "metro" as a giant start menu, which is much better than the terrible folder system of prior start menus with random readmes added and random sub-sub-sub folders leading to an uninstall...

I'm looking forward to seeing how Surface and a W8 machine play together (along with my xbox) and maybe even a Wphone8...

ghare:In other words, you aren't very bright all, and haven't actually used windows 8, but you know it sucks.

I know that putting the system shutdown options on a button labeled "start" looks like pure genius compared to hiding it in a secret menu called "settings" that only appears from the ether if you move your dingleberry-picker to the right spot and shout OPEN SESAME at the screen.

I don't need shiat hidden on my computer screen. It's not a farking tablet. It has plenty of real estate, thanks.

/ doesn't matter, won't be using Windows 8 and all my Server installs for 2012 will be core-only// all other servers will stay on 2008 R2 until something good comes out because my servers aren't farking tablets